In the midst of the worse influenza season in years, HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) urged hospitals to reach out to regional or state healthcare coalitions to plan how to manage the ever-growing number of patients showing up with flu-like symptoms.

Twice this year, CMS placed a Missouri hospital in immediate jeopardy of losing its Medicare funding after inspectors found problems with the way the facility was handling cases of possible abuse and neglect. Some of the incidents in question involved the use of restraint and seclusion, so take this story as a reminder to revisit when and how often your staff are trained in the relevant policies and procedures, and consider adding or increasing de-escalation training to help ensure that patient rights are respected.

As medications have grown increasingly powerful and healthcare workers have grown increasingly aware of the hazards some drugs pose, regulators and stakeholders have been looking for ways to improve safe-handling practices. While a number of guidelines and recommendations in the past have set expectations already for handling, transporting, and disposing of potentially harmful drugs, the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) aims to make a significant improvement next year with the implementation of its ambitious contribution known as General Chapter <800>.

Spotlight

Ransomware costs N.Y. hospital nearly $10M

A hospital that lost control of its computers last spring when hackers unleashed ransomware on its systems has paid nearly $10 million recovering in the past few months.

The hackers had demanded nearly $30,000 worth of bitcoin as ransom, but officials with Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, New York, declined, knowing there would be no guarantee that the attackers would fully remove their malicious software once paid off, The Buffalo News reported Wednesday.

Instead, the hospital invested in new hardware and software, and it paid for expert advice. Those categories accounted for about half of what has been spent thus far. The other half accounts for overtime pay, lost revenue, and other expenses. Moving forward, officials expect to spend at least $250,000 more per month to continue upgrading technology and educating employees to ward off future attackers.

In the wake of this incident, healthcare workers had to resort to old-school pen-and-paper recordkeeping techniques. But this sort of situation could also threaten patient care more directly.

“Cybersecurity can have a major impact on patient safety,” Mitch Work, MPA, FHIMSS, president and CEO of The Work Group, Inc., told the Patient Safety Monitor Journal. “If hackers are able to access patient records and information, they will conceivably have the capability to change and manipulate patient data, which could have disastrous consequences. Think of [someone] changing medications, patient vital signs, or even diagnoses.”

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